1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique and a system for providing computerized information which supports a medical diagnosis.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the medical field, a medical practitioner (e.g., a doctor) observes the state of a lesioned part and a temporal change in the lesioned part by displaying a medical image obtained by capturing an image of a patient (or part thereof) on a monitor and interpreting the medical image displayed on the monitor. Examples of apparatuses generating such kind of medical images include an X-ray computed tomography (CT) apparatus, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus, and an ultrasonic apparatus.
A diagnosis (image diagnosis) using these medical images can be divided into the process of discovering, for example, an abnormal shadow from a medical image and obtaining the characteristics thereof, and the process of conducting a differential diagnosis to determine what the shadow is.
Conventionally, with the aim of supporting a differential diagnosis by a doctor, there has been developed a medical diagnostic supporting apparatus that infers and provides what an abnormal shadow is, based on entered information such as the characteristics of the abnormal shadow (observation from image interpretation). For example, there has been proposed an apparatus for calculating the probability that a certain shadow in a chest X-ray CT image indicates a malignant tumor and the probability that the shadow indicates a benign tumor, and presenting them.
Normally, the appropriate procedure for using such an apparatus in an actual clinical practice is as follows; first, a doctor conducts a differential diagnosis, and after that, the doctor refers to the inference result output from the medical diagnostic supporting apparatus as reference information.
One issue arising in this case is that, if there are a number of pieces of information that are not entered, the accuracy of inference by the medical diagnostic supporting apparatus is reduced. Therefore, an attempt has been made to obtain a more reliable inference result by configuring the apparatus to select not-entered information required for an inference and prompt a doctor to additionally enter that information.
Japanese Patent No. 3226400 discusses a technique of selecting and presenting noteworthy not-entered information from an inference result (current inference result) of the apparatus based on information that has been entered (entered information) and an inference result that would be produced if the information that is currently not entered is added to the entered information. This technique calculates a degree of influence that each not-entered information has on the current inference result, and presents not-entered information that has a high influence degree.
Further, Japanese Patent No. 3226400 discusses, as a method of calculating a degree of influence, the method of focusing the diagnosis name that has the highest probability in the current inference result, and using a change amount of the probability when not-entered information is added thereto as the degree of influence.
Further, Japanese Patent No. 3226400 discusses the method of focusing on the probabilities of the diagnosis names in the current inference result, and using the sum of the change amounts of the probabilities when not-entered information is added thereto as the degree of influence. In the technique discussed in Japanese Patent No. 3226400, it is thereby possible to present not-entered information that has a high influence on the inference result of the apparatus based on entered information.
However, the technique discussed in Japanese Patent No. 3226400 selects noteworthy not-entered information only based on possession of a high influence value on the inference result of the apparatus based on entered information. Therefore, sometimes, information (observation) less likely to exist in a medical image may be presented as noteworthy not-entered information.